Doing well as India...but how do I WIN?

[Morningcalm]

I'm doing well on Noble Pangaea, Tiny size, Standard speed.

I was lucky enough to have a huge swathe of unclaimed land to my west, and I aggressively settled the east. I was originally aiming for a cultural victory with Delhi, Bombay and Vijaywhateveritsnameis, but it looks like Suleiman is going to hit culture far easier, and he's also ahead in tech. How do I win? Pericles and Wang Kon were old allies I cut ties with to prevent Suleiman and Julius from smacking me (and both are warmongers in this game).

Tips and/or even walkthroughs would be great.

Thanks in advance!

 

[lymond]

You are doing quite well actually. Not sure what the wars were all about.

Your mistakes:

1) Bombay is not a good NE city. You either want NE in a high food city or a high production wonder whore city. (you want to irrigate that rice in Bombay)

2) Why are you in Vassalage? Bureau is going to get you where you need to be faster.

3) Losing the Sistine Chapel was a big mistake. Look to trade for marble if you can, but get Music first and then build the wonder. Don't trade music until you do. music and Liberalism are 2 most important culture techs.

4) You have 4 religions which is great. Spread them to all your citiies so that you can build all the temples and then the religion wonders. It would be nice to pop up 3 more cities so that you have 9 cities, that way you can build one of each cathedrals, pagodas, etc in your 3 L cities. Those are HUGE culture boosts so getting ALL of them in all 3 cities speeds up your win.

5) Don't ever raise your culture slider until you reach a certain point. The most important thing is to focus on research to push to Music, Edu and the Lib. Once you get Liberalism you can switch to Free Speech and then raise your slider. The reason is you want all your culture multipliers in place. At that point you can lower the research to 0 and focus entirely on culture. Hopefully you have some shrined up cities to keep the cash flow going and max out the culture slider. (For later game culture pushes you can go the BIO> Medicine route and get Sushi. The extra food from BIO and Sushi is a boost late - plus Sushi adds culture. However, if you set up your game right you can finish Culture long before that.

6) You are going to want to start running artist specialist soon so that you can culture bomb cities. Culture bomb the city that is slowest to L and then just balance the bombs as needed.

7) Diplo is important in Culture VC. Don't start unnecessary wars unless you need more land/cities. Keep the peace and gain allies, or keep everyone happy if you can. If an AI is being a pest, then bribe someone to war on him.

You have everything you need here to win.

edit: Regarding Civics - Things like HR (or Rep), Slavery, Bureau and Organized Religion or good early. Whip in all your religion buildings and other key buildings. Note that Spiritual leaders like Gandhi get fast Temples which is huge for culture - with OR you will get them up fast - you can whip "into" the temples. Philosophy is great to as you will get fast Great Artist later and GSs early or GPs for shrines.

Later, Civics like Rep, Free Speech (key culture civic), Caste, Possibly Merc or Free Market, and Pacifism are nice. Free Religion is okay too if you don't need to rush Great ARtist or you are trying not to cause religious unrest. Usually you want those GAs.

Use odd Great People later for Golden Ages which will boosts GPPs, gold and culture.

 

[barbertje]

You need more workers to chop all those forests.

You could haved settled 3 more cities in your backyard, all with valuable resources.
copper give you a discount on confucian academies.
Do not use the culture slider until you have liberalism, and adopt free speech. Get lib ASAP, even if you can't get there first. As soon as you have it adopt caste system and pacifism and run lots of artists.
Build the national epic somewhere where there's a lot of food and don't run cottages there, but only farms.
Cimmerian is a much better city than Vijayanagara.
In non-culture cities, commerce will be nearly useless. Use these for building temples, missionaries, wealth or units.
Sell as much resources for cash as you can
I don't think vassalage is doing much for you.
spread your religions around more.

The fact that Suleiman is 3000 points ahead says little. Even with the sistine chapel you can easily beat him to culture. He needs 47000, you need 49000, no big deal.

The only problem is someone attacking you, or a diplomatic victory if suleiman vassals Pericles and Wang kong. With some new cities, and spreading hinduism everywhere, you should be
able to prevent that.

The Mai statues would be much more effectve in Vijayanagara with its 7 lake tiles than inBombay where you get only 4 hammers.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay few pointers.

1. Forrest. 1490 and it looks like you have barely chopped a single one down. So many wasted hammers just sitting there to be used.
2. Cities. it is 1490ad and you only have 6 cities??? This is Noble level not immortal. You should always be looking to expand. When i first started I used to build 5-6 cities and stopped. Then i wondered why the game was getting so hard.
3. 3 New citties to build 1 - 2fish/silver. 2 - copper/ sheep. 3 - Crabs/incense and horse.
4. Cultural win will require 3 cities? with culture over 50k.

The capital with wonders will make one city.
Your second and third city need looking at. At present you have 2 cities with just over 1k culture but they have very poor commerce and no towns yet. All the forest is not helping.

You could use a few GA farms. At present you are getting scientists and merchants. Won't get you a culture win. 5-6 GA would push weakest city to legendary status.

5. Espionage. It is better to have it directed all at one AI so you can get better results from espionage including revolting a city or stealing techs.

6. Why have you built 20-30 units if you have not even captured an AI city? Don't get this. On higher levels this army would be killing your economy. This is noble level. You can rush a nearby Ai with 6-7 warriors and take their capital. Builds 2 cities and chop/whip 5-6+ axe and kill some AI. Killer instinct!!

7. Great people farms. Generally for high food cities. Not really sure you have abused this enough on this map.


What I would of done myself. I would just pump out mace/treb and attack the AI. Push towards rifles and draft once globe theatre is built. You have enough units to knock out Koreans capital. Just beware of Romans. You already have 30% of the land. Not sure how! Almost 45% of world pop too. Domination is not far off!

You do have lots to learn at this level and most of this is more to do with the first 10-60 turns of your game. Including city placement, expanding, building enough workers and tech order too. Perhaps learning that food is key early on.

 

[Morningcalm]

Thanks for all the detailed feedback, astoundingly detailed stuff in your posts which I will try to allude to in this post, some of you have similar recommendations.

Ok, here goes. I'll slide down the culture until Liberalism and get Espionage running into a full engine. Some of you recommend war (Domination is admittedly a good alternative to culture), but with whom should I war? Caesar? Because then Suleiman would end up hating me and I'll lose the good will I got from cancelling trade with Wang and Pericles. Wang is an easy target now, of course....but Rome is in the way. I *almost* took that city too. My units were just 2 turns late, and I couldn't be stuffed reloading. =|

Some more questions:
*Should I change my cultural strategy focus to different cities? I do notice that 2 of the 3 cities I chose are relatively low in pop/prod. compared to say, Cimmercian.

*How do I work the Great People farms? Just spam wonders in high food cities? Or....(yeah I have no idea how GP farms really work)

*Switch from Vassalage to Bureaucracy? Are there policies that would be better for me later down the tech path?

*Where should I settle more cities? If I knew how to pinpoint locations on an ingame map I would....at this point I'm wondering which parts of the coast I should settle on. The economy is stagnating slightly, though with culture off that should be fixed.

*Doesn't cutting down forest lower health? That's why I kept quite a few of them up, actually. =|

*What wonders should I target for my cultural cities, and when should I have my cultural cities pumping out only culture as their production queue? I know this stage has to follow Liberalism and ideally Free Speech, but I'm worried the game might be over by then.

*Who should I focus espionage on? Caesar? (Mostly cuz I hate him in nearly all games I play).

Thanks again! Hoping to turn this into my first Noble victory in....aeons.

 

[Ghpstage]

Thanks for all the detailed feedback, astoundingly detailed stuff in your posts which I will try to allude to in this post, some of you have similar recommendations
Ok, here goes. I'll slide down the culture until Liberalism and get Espionage running into a full engine. Some of you recommend war (Domination is admittedly a good alternative to culture), but with whom should I war? Caesar? Because then Suleiman would end up hating me and I'll lose the good will I got from cancelling trade with Wang and Pericles. Wang is an easy target now, of course....but Rome is in the way. I *almost* took that city too. My units were just 2 turns late, and I couldn't be stuffed reloading. =|

If you attack someone I would recommend Greece. They are already at war, are hated, their only friend already hates you and their territory is close to yours.
Use not espionage..... I am pretty certain Gumbolt only meant focusing the esp points you get naturally, putting up the esp slider would be a monumental mistake!

Some more questions:
*Should I change my cultural strategy focus to different cities? I do notice that 2 of the 3 cities I chose are relatively low in pop/prod. compared to say, Cimmercian.

*How do I work the Great People farms? Just spam wonders in high food cities? Or....(yeah I have no idea how GP farms really work)

The most reliable GP farm is one with food that runs specialists. Wonders are just gravy to go on top, not necessary.

*Switch from Vassalage to Bureaucracy? Are there policies that would be better for me later down the tech path?

Vassalage is a poor civic most of the time, and is only worth even considering if your warring a lot. Bureacracy is on the other hand an outstanding civic for the mid game that should be used in almopst all games, its strong enough to build your economy around.
For a culture win Fre Speech will be your ultimate goal in this column, but Burea will help get you there.

Also, Slavery and Caste are both very powerful civics, while Serfdom is more or less worthless, swap out of that too

*Where should I settle more cities? If I knew how to pinpoint locations on an ingame map I would....at this point I'm wondering which parts of the coast I should settle on. The economy is stagnating slightly, though with culture off that should be fixed.

The silver with 2 fish is worth settling, and i'd argue the 4 lakes and horse is too as long as your coastal for the Lighthouse. In the west theres the sheep/copper and clam/horse sites too. Basically, if theres food there better be a damn good reason not to settle it!

*Doesn't cutting down forest lower health? That's why I kept quite a few of them up, actually. =|

A little, but buildings and resource trades are much more effective and chopping gets you hammers to build things earlier. If you end up working unimproved forest tiles as you are in your game you are damaging your economy quite a lot as those tiles a very weak.

*What wonders should I target for my cultural cities, and when should I have my cultural cities pumping out only culture as their production queue? I know this stage has to follow Liberalism and ideally Free Speech, but I'm worried the game might be over by then.

The big one for culture is the Sistine Chapel, it dramatically increases the culture output of your artists and religious buildings. Its so good that many people at higher levels grab it to prevent AIs getting early culture win!

Apart from that you can be opportunistic, Statue of Zeus has a very high culture output for a low cost if you have Ivory, Parthenon or Mausoleum are both very useful, give good culture and give artists GPP as a bonus. Obviously all these have gone, but its food for thought for future games.
You only want to start building culture when your cities have all their culture buildings in place, your cathedrals, theatres and anything else you may be bale to get, especially the cathedrals. Its ages too early to even consider building culture.
Don't worry, you have plenty of time, and the AIs aren't close to even being miles away from any victories yet

*Who should I focus espionage on? Caesar? (Mostly cuz I hate him in nearly all games I play).

Its not too important, but Rome or Greece would be the most obvious choices being your neighbours.

 

[sydhe]

Don't forget the Hermitage. It should go in your third-place cultural city unless there are two other national wonders that belong there.

 

[vanillasine]

i think suntsu has a great article in teh strategy section about culture victories, and likes to just culture bomb the 3rd city while building the best stuff in the 1st and 2nd. (or so i remember, was a while ago).

 

[Morningcalm]

Thanks guys! I was going for a Domination Victory, when suddenly Caesar attacked me and took my coastal city while I was off guard (had only 4 units in it). Until he attacked I owned 58% of all the land in the world, but after the attack I realized winning through Domination would be both dull and take painstakingly long. So I just got a UN diplo victory, leveraging my huge population and support from Suleiman, who shared my mutual distrust of Caesar (who had Wang Kon as his vassal).

The game ended in 1962, what tips would you give to end it earlier? I was going for a mace and treb rush, but ended up conquering Pericles only around the time cannons and riflemen were available. I think I was too slow, but I have no idea how to get land conquered faster. I didn't draft cuz I was afraid of unhappiness (several of my cities had Pericles' state religion). Tips? =|

 

[Mylene]

Basically wars with slow middle age units like Trebs or Maces work only well on either lower difficulties, or slow game speed, or if you are already very talented
To get better you might want to start thinking about the key units to use, which is usually the horses like Curs and Cavs, early the Horse Archers if you run into a game with not much land available. 2 move units are always faster.

When you look at the tech path, you will see that for Curassiers you can skip the whole machinery/engineering line, and use Education instead.
Here lies the biggest AI weakness, they do not focus on the best tech path and instead always go for engineering. Education can also be bulbed by 2 GS, one reason why GP farming can be very important.
So if you seek to get your game to the next level, study this greater game plan, and the small steps to get there will be easier to understand.